Watch in HD: Jaw-Dropping Showcase of Updates to SL's Angel Manor

If you have the bandwidth to watch this in the highest of high definition modes, buffer it up first, and then hit play. This is Angel Manor Estate, which we last saw here in 2015, but owner Kaya Angel and team have made some epic updates since then:

A short showcase filmed in 4k of some of the renovations made to the main residence of Angel Manor Estate. An open house for people to enjoy and be inspired by. We welcome photographers who wish to use the settings and rooms of Angel Manor as a back drop. The House is best seen at night to allow the lighting to take full effect.

I'm happy to be proven wrong -- that's what the Comments below are for -- but I think this is probably the must ornate and intricately detailed Second Life sim that's ever existed.

Facebook page here; multiple teleport links across the manor at this link.

Comments

[Chic Aeon]

Very nicely done and certainly shows opulence! No problems viewing on a large screen monitor.

[Animats]

Beautiful. So that's what SL can do if used properly.

[weekend ruiner]

I went to look round.
It looks better from a distance - any close inspection will highlight the flaws with the place. You get some high res materials and some, well, not so high.

there's the old favourite mirror build for reflections

IF you want to be pedantic you will see texture repeats on various faces not following through the way you would expect.
Specular is set way too high on a lot of surfaces when subtle usage would have been more effective.
Normals in a lot of instances have been created directly form a source image without thought on what it really should be applied to. ( ie a wooden floor in which the dark squares are recessed when the floor should be flat )

The library for some reason seems to have all the books with their protective plastic dust covers on.

In short, it could have been great.
it's not. It's merely ok.

[kayaangel]

Thank you for your comments Weekend Ruiner. I'm not sure if your name is a hint at something. Anyway just wanted to add a few things to you comment. Indeed it may not be perfect, but I do try the best I can with the time I have. It's 12 sims that I've build all by my self its a large ask to expect every single texture (of which there are so many used) to be perfect. As for the comments about materials. It may be that you saw it with out shadows on. As when shadows are not on spec maps are much stronger. Its really hard to balance between the many different settings and computers people have as we all see the world in a very different way. It is set to be seen using the high end features in most viewers so if you don't have a computer that can do that then indeed things like Spec maps may seem so strong. But thank you for your comments and I shall try to do better next time :-)

[weekend ruiner]

Hi kayaangel
it's a very bold thing to do but with materials, often a less is more approach works best ( depending on the desired result )
I tend to over-inspect ( I have a thing for materials and detailing ) and while I was impressed at the magnitude of the work involved in there I couldn't help feel that some tweaks here and there just to make things really jump at you could be beneficial. There is the trade off between texture memory , lag as the cpu cries under protest and realism. You can achieve stunning results ( see Beev Fallen's work (https://www.flickr.com/photos/bubblebob/ might be NSFW) or Isa Messioptera (https://www.flickr.com/photos/isa_messioptra/) ( mine can be judged accordingly over at https://www.flickr.com/photos/weakened_ruiner/ you might need to scroll down a bit)
I work with projectors a lot so often have shadows set to sun/moon only.

With regards to the floor I referred to above, this is a very easy and common thing to do ( I've done it and many content creators continue to do it as its art of the materials learning curve ) where the normal map generator ( I'm not sure what was used) has used the floor texture as is. There's a great resource on normals creation online that highlights how easy it is to do that and what you can do to fix it which would need a bit of jiggery pokery to apply the normal only to the parts it should be applied to ( the seams between tiles ) whilst keeping the rest flat which can be pain to do in some instances with the texture to create the normal map from bearing little resemblance to the source.

As for the name, I had an inworld group where I would send out boxes of things I made every week ( there's 299 in total ) which were made solely for advanced lighting, shadows, reflections and whatever my imagination came up with that week from hallways, escalators, rooms, multiple projectors etc.
Someone said it ruined their weekend when I sent the first one out so the name stuck.